A Day in the Life

Today, I was looking at the contents of my wallet and I thought that all that I had and the life that I led now is possible because of the hard work that my parents have put in to support me.  To my mom, I’m grateful for all the time and sweat that she has invested to make me the person I am today.  There are times when I was younger that I was frustrated by all the expectations she had of me, but now I realized that those expectations were her way of pushing me and saying she believed in me.  I owe my sense of morals and good work ethic to her; she has taught me well.  To Tony, he has been so supportive of everything I do; he’s the best stepdad anyone could’ve hoped for.  From all the basketball games of mine he’s attended to my little guitar stint, he’s always believed in me.  It’s great how we can be such great buddies and really enjoy each other’s company.

I want to dedicate part of the success that I’ve been able to achieve so far to them because really, without their support, I would not have been able to reach as high as I have.  Thank you mom and Tony.

All our actions are limited to that which we can imagine; what we can’t imagine can never become our reality.  However lofty the goals we strive for, we have to be able to imagine ourselves achieving them first.  Expanding our imagination is then like expanding our horizons…it opens up new possibilities, new directions, and opens our minds to even more novel ideas.  

When we were babies, our world was very small because of the limitation of our experience.  As we grow up, acquiring more and more experiences, our imagination become more supple and creative.  However, at some point people seem to stagnate and become trapped in one perspective, one way of thinking.  Why does this happen?  Personally, I think we reach this saturation point because of social conditioning and the effects of conformity.  Also because of the monotonicity that infests a lot of our lives.  Never be afraid of stretching social boundaries and breaking from the common standard, it is only though testing the fabric of society that we’re able to make progress.  Be open to spontaneity, that’s all we can do because if we strove for spontaneity, then it becomes planned.  

Inspired by the following observation:

The best move I can make is only one which counters best what I can foresee my opponents doing.  If our repertoire of moves coincide, I’m safe..however, if his repertoire is more expansive, I can never defend against his attack or penetrate his defenses.

Is our life as ephemeral as the footprints left behind in a trek through the desert? 

We can choose to make our imprints last longer by having a positive impact on the lives of people around us for this is the only way we can become larger than ourselves.

Photo via: 

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There are days that go by that when I look back on them, nothing stands out and everything is blank.  It’s as if my memory completely shut down those days and I might as well have been asleep the entire day.  If we subtract all those days from our lives, how many days, months, years do we really live?  

In GO (some Asian boardgame), oftentimes it’s quite possible to remember the entire sequence of moves in a game because you have thoroughly explored each possibility at each junction in the game and have a rationale for why you made the next move.  It’s because of the high level of concentration and conscious decision making that the game sticks in our memory.  Contrasting this with how we go about our daily lives, we see a lot of times we go through the motions and don’t observe our surroundings or process our actions.  There are some tasks that we can and SHOULD do that way, like locking the door or brushing our teeth.  Habits become muscle memory and it’s understandable that our mind shuts down and we begin musing about something else while we’re performing those tasks.  But what happens when we’re at work?  Do you find your mind wondering and drifting off to some other place (thing, idea, memory) that you’d rather be? After an entire day of work, can you specifically pinpoint what you were able to accomplish in that day?  

My days are usually made meaningful by observations that I make about other people or life in general, by things I do to help other people and improve their lives or make them happier,  by progress that I make myself, be it in academic pursuits, or just self-improvement.  What is the underlying factor in all these things?  That they all occur as a result of a conscious decision that was converted into meaningful action.  The keyword here is conscious.  This is why I want to write a blog; it gives me more motivation/incentive to be conscious and do things that will result in experiences that I’ll want to write about and share with other people.  That’s it for now!  Have a great 4th of July!

Nothing beats Macy’s 4th of July fireworks =)

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